Regular readers of this column know that nothing brings more joy the morning after a Packers win over an archrival than to read the loser’s media the morning after.

Particularly Chicago media, given that the Chicago media covering Da Bears appears to drink Drano before spitting out their caustic thoughts about the team they’re paid to cover.

We begin with ESPN Chicago’s Jon Greenberg:

There are many myths, myriad untruths, about the Chicago Bears‘ controversial quarterback Jay Cutler.

Here’s what I know about Cutler: He is very, very tough. He is very, very smart. His hair contains multitudes. He can’t beat the Green Bay Packers.

Just look at the numbers.

Facing his nemesis once again, Cutler threw two costly second-half picks on consecutive possessions that the Packers turned into touchdowns as the Bears dropped a squeaker, 38-17, at Soldier Field.

Yes, the NFC North still goes through Green Bay. The Bears will play there in a prime-time game on Nov. 9.

Cutler is now 1-9 against Green Bay in his roller-coaster Chicago career, including that 2010 NFC Championship Game defeat. He’s thrown 20 interceptions in those games.

Run the spread-blame formation all you want, Cutler fans, but turnovers and losses are connected.

Yes, the Bears’ defense was putrid, with no pass rush up front and no chance for the secondary to cover Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb.

It’s not like Green Bay’s defense was particularly good. It just took advantage of the Bears’ mistakes. …

Smart observers knew that this defense, depleted further with the absence of an ill Jared Allen, would have its hands full with Aaron Rodgers. This wasn’t going to beGeno Smith winging it around.

So that meant more pressure on Cutler to be perfect, or close to it. Instead, Cutler was Cutler, a victim of circumstance as fortune smiled upon his opponent.

The game was close at the break — 21-17 Green Bay after the Bears missed a last-second touchdown by inches and perhaps a bad spot — and the second half belonged to the better quarterback and the better team.

It was Rodgers, who had told his rabid fan base to relax after a 1-2 start, who was close to perfect. …

While the Bears finally achieved offensive balance with 235 rushing yards (122 on 23 carries forMatt Forte) and 256 passing yards, Green Bay took advantage of Chicago turnovers and then just relied on its franchise quarterback to move the chains and win the game.

Anyone who still thinks Cutler is ready to pass Rodgers in the NFC North quarterback derby, raise your hand.

Here’s my expert take: Rodgers is up here (reaches high) and Cutler is around here (waves hand around flabby midsection). …

On the second pick, Bears coach Marc Trestman said the play call was for Marshall to run an 18-yard hook, but Marshall “turned it into” a go route, i.e., he ran straight down the field. Cutler threw to the hook, a country mile from where Marshall was at the time, and Sam Shieldswas there to take advantage, returning it for 62 yards to the Bears’ 11-yard line.

Marshall, who has been hobbled by a bum ankle, declined to speak to reporters after the game.

“He was upset,” Cutler said. “A miscommunication on my part and his part. Sometimes miscommunications in this game can be pricy.”

Speaking of pricy, this past offseason Cutler signed a deal for $54 million in guaranteed money, while Marshall was inked for about $22 million in guaranteed cash. That’s “Beat Green Bay”money. They know that, of course.

The Arlington Daily Herald’s Barry Rozner:

The Bears have now won two games on the road in prime time against top NFL defenses and lost twice at home, opening against Buffalo — 6-10 a year ago — and now losing to a Green Bay team that came in 1-2 and had done virtually nothing right for three weeks.

Welcome to the NFL. …

Here’s what the Bears did well in their 38-17 loss to the Packers on Sunday at Soldier Field: They ran the football against one of the worst rush defenses in the league, and stopped the run against one of the worst rushing games in the league.

Here’s what they did wrong: pretty much everything else.

And while the city will light its collective hair on fire and focus much of this week on Jay Cutler and his struggles against Green Bay, the real problem continues to be the defense.

Granted, they were missing Jared Allen, Jeremiah Ratliff and Charles Tillman, but Aaron Rodgers and the Packers scored touchdowns on five of their first six possessions and got points on every possession of the game except the last, when the Bears blocked a field goal.

“He’s the best quarterback in the league and it was their day today,” said linebacker Lance Briggs. “We couldn’t get to him.”

It was a clinic. Rodgers was 22-of-28 passing for 302 yards, 4 TDs, a QB rating of 151.2 and was never touched in the backfield. …

The Bears did get Rodgers moving a few times, but he simply bought himself some time and then found wide-open receivers. …

Rodgers doesn’t have the weapons he once did, but when he’s got all day to sit in the pocket, or use his feet to extend a play, he’s going to find a player wearing the same jersey. …

Rodgers executed and the Bears’ defense was consistently late, but nearly all the blame goes to the pass rush, which was nonexistent against an offensive line that had been awful for three weeks.

Remember when Da Bears’ defense led the team? Now, not so much, as demonstrated by the Chicago Sun-Times:

“We’re going to do everything we can to get pressure on this guy, as soon as we can, as fast as we can,” defensive end Willie Young said. “But even when he’s on the move, he’s still a great guy. It doesn’t change him one bit.”

“This guy” would be Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. And “this guy” was praised effusively like an active Hall of Famer in the Bears locker room after completing 22 of 28 passes for 302 yards, four touchdowns and a 151.2 passer rating (the best rating against the Bears since 1965).

“That’s Aaron Rodgers, you know,” Young said.

“I mean, he’s great,” linebacker Jon Bostic said.

“It’s Aaron Rodgers,” defensive end Lamarr Houston added.

The Bears had one sack, but it came when rookie defensive tackle Ego Ferguson ran Rodgers out of bounds during the second-to-last play of the third quarter. Game statisticians had the Bears down for zero quarterback hits. Repeat: zero hits.

Zero punts, too, by either team, only the second time that’s happened in NFL history.

Dan Bernstein of The Score apparently has jumped off whatever Bears bandwagon existed:

So much for all that about the Bears.

So much for the rejuvenated defense, powered by the burgeoning development of so many young players behind an invigorated pass rush. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers shut that all up real quick, needing all of two minutes to burn through them for the first of his four touchdown passes in Green Bay’s 38-17 win at Chicago on Sunday afternoon. Rodgers put to bed the murmurs about his own early season struggles, completing 22 of 28 passes for 302 yards with a rating of 151.2.

The Bears’ opportunity to seize control of the NFC North turned into a reaffirmation of Packers’ dominance over a flaccid secondary that couldn’t match up with the obvious. It wasn’t exactly a secret that Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb would be targeted, yet the two still combined for 17 catches for 221 yards and those four scores.

So much for the latest, lazy iteration of the newest “new” Jay Cutler. After the killer interception in the opener against Buffalo, enough of his other picks were dropped by the 49ers and Jets that the usual suspects in the business of giving bad, wrong opinions pushed the idea that mature Jay is something other than what an eight-year, 107-game sample size has proved him to be. Clay Matthews corralled a deflection after Cutler tried to force a slant to Josh Morgan despite inside-leverage coverage, and then a miscommunication with buddy Brandon Marshall allowed Sam Shields a freebie.
So much for what a commitment to the run game would do to create some all-important offensive balance. The Bears rushed for 235 yards and 16 of their 33 first downs. They averaged 5.7 yards per attempt.

And they lost by three touchdowns. …

So much for general manager Phil Emery’s recent draft classes asserting themselves, as Kyle Fuller and Jon Bostic both evinced more uncertainty than execution Sunday, and there was little help noticeable from Will Sutton or Ego Ferguson up front.

So much for coach Marc Trestman’s sustained brilliance, as his creative play-calling and refreshing onside kick risk-taking were undermined by inexplicable clock management at the end of the first half that resulted in time expiring and no points, as Martellus Bennett’s futile reach for the goal line was obscured enough by defenders to stand upon review.

There is ample time to restore all the good vibes humming in the air after three games, but this one just popped a bunch of hopeful balloons. This was what the matchup has looked like for too long.

The Chicago Tribune’s David Waugh heaps blame on the defense as well:

Oh, Cutler needs to play at a higher level. He acknowledged as much when explaining each mistake like a professional. But the blame Cutler will receive around Chicago for the Bears being totally outclassed and outcoached will be disproportionate to what he deserves. Every fair and accurate explanation of what went wrong in a 21-point defeat starts with the Bears’ deplorable defense, not Cutler. If forced to compare shortcomings, the Bears remain closer to having a playoff-caliber quarterback than defense.

Alas, this is what mediocrity looks like in a league full of flawed teams like the Bears. They end the month 2-2, alternately good enough to inspire hope and bad enough to restore reality into every NFC playoff discussion — due mostly to a defense that disappointed them yet again. Cutler could have thrown for 400 yards without an interception and it likely still wouldn’t have been enough against a Packers offense that turned a shootout into a blowout. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers arrived struggling, by his standards, and left laughing. …

The Packers scored on six of seven drives, none lasting longer than 4 minutes, 3 seconds. Rodgers routinely put the ball wherever he wanted to wide receivers who got wide open wherever they chose. The grounds crew broke more of a sweat than Packers punter Tim Masthay, who hopefully enjoyed his view of the Chicago skyline during the second NFL game ever without a punt.

The Bears possessed the ball for 36 minutes and gained 235 yards rushing — destroying myths about running the football in today’s NFL — and still lost by three touchdowns because their defense remembered how hard life is when Geno Smith isn’t the opposing quarterback. Too often, the Bears eschewed blitzing and relied on a four-man pass rush that went nowhere fast trying to shake a quarterback who’s unshakable.

Meanwhile, the Daily Herald’s Mike Imrem takes a look upstairs:

It was easy to imagine George Halas and Vince Lombardi sitting at that big gin rummy table in the sky Sunday afternoon.

Each kept one eye on their cards and the other on the heavenly big-screen TV transmitting the Packers-Bears game from Soldier Field.

Cable knows no limits, you know?

Neither of the two legendary former football coaches could believe what they were seeing. They tuned in to the Packers and Bears, but a Showtime Lakers vs. Jordan Bulls score-fest broke out.

“What the heck is going on down there,” Lombardi finally said in his inimitable tone.

That was about when Green Bay was taking a 21-17 halftime lead on the way to a 38-17 victory.

The game was as much in the tradition of Bears-Packers as Lindsay Lohan is in the tradition of Audrey Hepburn.

“Remember our first game against each other?” Lombardi said.

He arrived at Green Bay in 1959 and his first regular-season game as Packers coach was a 9-6 victory over the Bears.

“I can’t believe we lost that one,” Halas groaned.

Lombardi chuckled, “I can’t believe we let you score 6 points.”

Every yard was precious when Halas and Lombardi squared off from ’59 through ’67. The game plan was to play stingy defense and on offense run the ball to set up, well, more runs.

In 1962, Green Bay allowed the Bears 7 points in two games. In ’63, the Bears allowed the Packers 10 points in two games.

Sunday the teams combined for 38 points in the first half alone. The 2010s are pretty pastels, while the 1960s were black and blue.

Defense — whether it be strategy or ferocity — was only a rumor in this latest edition until the Bears managed to stop themselves in the second half.

The NFL is more entertaining now, especially if scoring is your thing. Three yards and a cloud of dust has been succeeded by 30-yard pass completions and 15 more yards after missed tackles.

The Bears did run the ball in an attempt to keep it away from Green Bay’s offense. They finished with 235 rushing yards, but the Packers’ passing game scored faster and more often.

“Do you believe neither team forced a punt in this game?” Lombardi said.

Back when he and Halas coached against each other, some coaches believed the punt was the most exciting play in football, just ahead of the 2-yard-plunge on third-and-long.

“No punts and no punches, either,” Halas said, perhaps remembering back to when the Bears beat you up even if they didn’t beat you. …

In a game of pass-fail, the Packers passed to daylight and the Bears ran toward futility.

Lombardi jabbed at Halas, “We learned to throw the ball with Brett Favre in the 1990s and you’re just starting to with Jay Cutler. Good luck with that.”